By Isaac Massaquoi
Those who are not interested in football and its accompanying noise, excitement and anxiety about which player is moving to which team or which teams are doing well or failing should probably never try to join us in this crazy business. It's expensive, time-consuming and full of stress.
Imagine this: David Beckham was a well-respected star in England. We woke up one morning to news that he had had some dressing room argument with great Sir Alex. The next time we saw the man, he was being presented to supporters of Real Madrid as another Galactico. I still don't know what happened in that dressing room.
Players who profess undying love for one club today, quickly find themselves kissing the crests of other clubs in front of the camera in less than a week. What's going on?
We have just witnessed another round of such transfers with the media at the centre of it all. Publishing rumours and speculations about which players are to be sold or bought by which clubs triggered mostly by the players themselves and their agents over the last few months. This really, stretched to breaking point, my understanding of traditional journalistic standards of sourcing news and truth-telling. In all journalism schools, students are taught to be very careful in dealing with rumours because when journalistic standards are ignored because of juicy rumours that could make fantastic headlines, danger could be at the door - an expensive court case or a massive loss of face with retractions.
In the football transfer business, all rules are broken with relish and nobody is sued. Otherwise, many news organisations would be paying heavy bills for publishing false stories about Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger tabling a bid for the unnecessarily fiery-tempered Italian footballer, Mario Ballotelli, only for Wenger to tell a news conference he had never even thought about signing the man. But you may ask, won't you, whether Mr. Wenger was being truthful. It's all part of what happens in the transfer market.
I sat through two hours of deadline day coverage of the transfer market by Sky Sports. It was fast, dramatic and breathless. It was fun but the frailties of 24-hour TV with its love from drama and 'liveness' came through clearly, from the technology malfunctioning in the middle of an event to the odd intruder who decides to make a nuisance of himself.
On Monday, Sky Sports was forced to apologise about three times for the behaviour of some young fans who are always around on transfer deadline days. Some of them shouted offensive language into the live camera and even disrupted live transmissions.
The situation at Loftus Road, the home of Queens Park Rangers, was really crazy. While the reporter was busy reporting the club's new acquisitions, two Chelsea fans displayed a Chelsea flag and shirt, totally eclipsing what the reporter was saying. On a night like that, there's nothing wrong with allowing a bit of noise - after all, it's football. But when bad language and general unruly behaviour threaten to mar an otherwise spectacular occasion viewed by millions around the world on a respected broadcaster like Sky, action should be taken to keep those small-time troublemakers off.
The truth is, all the hype around football transfers is created by the media and their pundits. The pundits who are mostly former footballers and coaches have gained so much relevance and power that I wouldn't be surprised if their comments are taken into consideration when even the most accomplished of managers goes into the transfer market.
Could it then be that those pundits have something to do, behind the scenes, with the players and their agents? Please allow me to ask this question in the spirit of transfer rumours and speculation.
Now to the commodities - well, I mean the players. For them every move is "a dream come true". And for the love of the new team and the game. Only a few of them, like the Togolese international Emmanuel Adebayor, have been bold enough to speak the truth. When he moved to Manchester City from Arsenal, he stated clearly, that the money was too good to ignore.
The amount of money involved in buying and loaning players in the main football leagues in Europe is just unbelievable - players' wages, transfer fees, agents' and lawyers' fees. It's big money business. I know a guy who said he met Wayne Rooney in his dream and after a brief chat, the England captain decided to give him his salary for a week. It's a cool $ 250, 000. Many lives would be changed forever in many parts of the world. But alas, this was a dream.
So Manchester United spent more money than any other club in the English Premier League this time round. If the new manager Louis Van Gaal had his way, he would have brought in a whole new squad to replace Sir Alex Fergusson's squad made up of some tired and some inexperienced players. But there are rules as to how much they can spend and the wily old fox of a manager cannot afford a backlash from the United old guard and the Glazer family.
I wonder how much time Manchester United fans will give the new manager. I agree that David Moyes was totally out of his depth in the United job. He should never have been appointed in the first place. But to be fair with him, he really wasn't given time to settle down. Umaru Fofana (obviously a Manchester United man), vehemently disagrees with me on this point. I understand his pain.
Under Louis Van Gaal, we have witnessed two very flat performances so far and United are in the second half of the table. It's early days yet, but with all the new players, Louis Van Gaal would quickly run out of excuses if the results and performance on the field do not improve quickly.
I've been trying to get at the reasoning behind Arsene Wenger's decision to sign Danny Welbeck. The guy is slow, he shows very little fight on the pitch and I will select the much-maligned Olivier Giroud over Welbeck any day. I am waiting for Wenger to play his magic and make Welbeck a prolific goal scorer. He may well have brought another Marouanne Charmarkh to the Emirates.
Along with the players, football managers have also been on the move in their usual music-and-chairs game. They have a much shorter life span. It's simple and straightforward - when their players fail to produce good results on the field, the manager is sacked.
I predict that the first manager to be sacked after transfer deadline day would be Harry Redknapp of Queens Park Rangers. He has put his hopes of staying in the premiership on a few players he's worked with in the past. This quick fix would fail and Harry would move on to another struggling team by Christmas.
This year, I really miss the drama of those four fake agents in suits travelling to a hotel in Spain, posing as representatives of Manchester United to negotiate a deal to bring Ander Herrera to Old Trafford from Athletico Bilbao. Very funny indeed! Even though Herrera has eventually join the Old Trafford team a few months later.
What about Peter Odemwinge who drove from his club in the English Midlands to London, to force through a move to Queens Park Rangers? After waiting in his car for three hours he was told there was no deal. His own last-minute Christmas shopping went really bad.
So the contracts are now in place, the players are in training and here we are waiting for the new-look sides to take to the pitch. Controversial FIFA president Sepp Blatter once described the restrictive nature of the contracts as a kind of slavery.
The pontiff of world football said "I think in football there's too much modern slavery in transferring players or buying players here and there, and putting them somewhere." I get the sense of the message he wanted to send across but then, as now, I totally disagree with him attaching the image of the slave who was dragged from his village somewhere in West Africa and taken on that perilous journey across the Atlantic to his modern slave who drives a Ferrari, spends his holiday on the French Riviera and gives his wife $10, 000 for shopping on weekends.
I congratulate Umaru Fofana because they have managed to land that ruthless assassin called Radamel Falcao. He is very dangerous in front of goal but I warn Umaru that Falcao's knee trouble could cause a little problem and, as a friend of Manchester United, I will be sending Louis Van Gaal a text message to remind him that "there's a gaping hole at the back and Diego Costa is leading the line for the Blues".
(C) Politico 04/09/14
